Problems with ViaVoice under Leopard, especially key mapping problems

Question

ViaVoice's behavior has changed considerably under Leopard. First I will discuss the key mapping problem, since I'm eagerly looking for an answer to this problem. At the end of this post, I will voice some of the other problems I've experienced for those who may be interested. The key mapping problem may be specific to the fact that I use a foreign keyboard with a US version of ViaVoice.
INTRO:
I have used ViaVoice on my Mac for years, more or less without problems (ViaVoice's bugginess is notorious).
Those who know ViaVoice will know that one has two general options for dictation. One can dictate into ViaVoice's so-called SpeakPad, which allows special formatting, editing and dictation error correction within the dictated text, or one can dictate into "external" software such as Microsoft Word, in which case ViaVoice just sends a string of characters to that software. SpeakPad appears to make strong use of the operating system's built-in functionality for character formatting, document formatting, etc.
*MY PROBLEM*
I have a German keyboard on my PowerBook, yet dictate in US English. When I dictated into SpeakPad under Tiger, all characters appeared correctly. However, when I dictated into Microsoft Word using Tiger, I had to switch the keyboard mapping from German to US to get all characters (that means including the characters that are located at different positions on a German keyboard than they are on a US keyboard such as y, z, apostrophes and parentheses) to appear correctly.
Under Leopard, things have changed. Now it doesn't matter whether I dictate into SpeakPad or Word; the results are the same and many characters do not appear correctly.
If set to a German keyboard, y and z appear as expected. To name a few irregularities:
"(" appears as ")"
")" appears as "="
apostrophes appear as "#" and
";" appears as ","
If set to a US keyboard, y and z are interchanged. "(" and ")" appear as expected. Apostrophes appear as "\" and ";" appears as ","
By comparison, if typed (as opposed to dictated, as in the examples above) "correctly" (i.e. based on the letters printed on the keyboard) on a German keyboard set to imitate a US keyboard:
y and z are interchanged
apostrophes appear as "|"
"(" appears as "*"
")" appears as "(" and
";" appears as the symbol for "less than"
Since I don't have a US keyboard, I can't say how it would behave if set to imitate a German keyboard, i.e. if there's a correlation to the results I get when I dictate.
Since I was previously able to dictate correctly into SpeakPad by setting the keyboard to "German" and into Word by setting the keyboard to "US," I presume that this is a problem in Leopard, not ViaVoice.
*OTHER PROBLEMS WITH VIAVOICE UNDER LEOPARD*
In addition to the aforementioned key mapping problems (that may be specific to those of us with foreign keyboards), ViaVoice appears to have lost considerable functionality in Leopard. I cannot access SpeakPad's Preferences and the correction window. Moreover, the traffic-light like window buttons have disappeared from the VoiceCenter (although they work if you click where they should be). SetupAssistent appears to function.
I've written to Nuance about these problems, but have little hope that they will invest the time in producing a patch since they haven't released any updates since 2003.

Answer 1

Thrums1,
I've never had to "register" ViaVoice after updating the system. I thus suspect you haven't fully followed my above, three-step advice (particularly step 3).
1) Reinstall ViaVoice from CD.
2) Update to the latest version (using the patch downloadable from Nuance's website).
3) Replace the “temp” and “users” folders (in the "ViaVoice" folder at the upper level of your home directory) by a previous copy thereof. When I say previous copy, I mean a copy from when ViaVoice was still working properly, e.g. a copy from when it was running under Tiger.
As I said, I've gotten ViaVoice to survive several system updates by following the above steps. To my knowledge, the last step is critical since it saves you from having to reconfigure ViaVoice under the new operating system (in this case Leopard). I suspect that ViaVoice is crashing on your system because it's trying to start some module of the SetUpAssistant that is incompatible with Leopard (as many are). If you instead use old copies of the "temp" and "users" folders (from the previous system), then ViaVoice doesn't have to go through the initial "registration" process; ViaVoice doesn't need the SetUpAssistant; and all is (more or less) fine.
Good luck!
BTW, to my knowledge, Dictate only runs on Intel Macs. It thus won't run on a G4 iBook, just as it won't run on my PowerBook G4.